Privacy and security have become a high priority for both consumers and companies that use computing devices that contain personal or highly confidential information/data. While many users are excited about the possibilities opened up by sharing detailed data records of their activity with a system capable of reasoning over these records, many other users are concerned about the a perceived invasion of privacy which they must “put up with” in order to have enhanced experiences. Some users decide to opt-out of the sharing of their data altogether, forgoing the enhanced experiences in favor of retaining their privacy.
Furthermore, in different situations, different restrictions on activity records may be desired. However, current techniques tend to provide for an all-or-nothing way to lock down activity records in given situations, and the user has to manually switch between these modes. An example of this is the manual launching of an Internet browser in a private mode or in a non-private mode.